I *Finally* got a laptop (Thinkpad R51 - Penium M - 2gb ram / 1.6 processor) that I can dedicate to Linux. (Reminder: I'm coming from a mac background) I downloaded a few different distros now and am having a ball. So far, my favorite "look" is Vector with XFCE.

Right now, I have no hard drive - so I wanted to do a little writing in Abiword while running the liveDVD and save it to a flash drive. The system sees and mounts the flash drive. It can open files from the drive. However, I get various errors telling me I can't save to the flash drive. One error message was detailed enough to show that it didn't have permissions to save. I then took the flashdrive back to my Mac, and I changed permissions to allow all to read and write. It didn't make a bit of difference once I got back to Linux though.

Then I thought I was smart because I right clicked (I'm not used to multi-buttons so right clicking is a big deal for me ... lol) and found "properties" for the flash drive. I see the permissions, but I can't change them. I think I have to be logged in as the root admin. How do I do that from the live DVD?

Also - last issue. On Mepis, my trackpad was a wild ride and totally a mess. On PCLinuxOS, the trackpad behaved as I'd expect. On Vector, the trackpad behaves mostly well, but I swear it anticipates a click if I hover too long - and it clicks without my intention. Is this just an issue because I'm running from the DVD? Will it resolve itself once I install the full program to a HD, or can I correct it? I found trackpad settings, but it didn't change the behavior enough that I notice a change.

There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to customizing a touchpad. In a terminal, issue command "synclient -l". If you see a long list of options, those can be changed. We usually do this from a startup script, so on a LiveCD you would have to manually do it after every boot.

The issue with your USB drive could be file system related. Was it formatted by your Mac computer?

re: Touchpad. I think I'll leave it alone until I do the real install. It isn't bad enough that it will make me totally crazy for the time being. (And I am a little afraid of working in the terminal yet!)

re: Flash Drive. Yes, it was formatted on my mac. I used Mac OS Extended (journaled) format. Here are the other options I can see in my disk utility on my mac:

I was able to format it on my mac. I never knew fat32 was the same as MS-DOS. I wondered what it was so many times when I'd seen the term thrown around.

You've just saved me from having to use my very annoying antique macs for the rest of the week. Now I can do my writing assignments on the "new" thinkpad even without its hard drive. Hurray. Life is good.